Sheet material dispensers are designed to dispense sheet material from various sources including folded sheet material and rolled sheet material. Each type of sheet material source requires a different means of loading and dispensing the sheet material. As a result, each source creates unique refilling problems for maintenance personnel.
Folded sheet material dispensers contain separate sheets of folded sheet material that are dispensed through an opening. Although most of these types of dispensers are relatively simple, there are drawbacks associated with using folded sheet material because this type of sheet material can be relatively expensive and occupy a rather large volume. In addition, dispensers containing folded sheet material generally need to be filled more often than other dispensers because they permit dispensing of multiple folded sheets simultaneously.
The most common type of sheet dispensers have sheet material wound on rolls. These dispensers have several different means of dispensing paper. The sheets can be removed by either pulling on a free end of a sheet or actuating a lever to advance the sheet. To increase sheet material supply, many roll dispensers are capable of holding two rolls of sheet material. These dispensers often require complicated transfer systems to switch dispensing from one roll to another. One type of transfer system uses a mechanism to detect tension in sheet material from a first roll. Once the tension is removed from the sheet material, indicating the first roll is empty, the mechanism pivots, thereby moving a free end of sheet material from the second roll of sheet material into engagement with a dispensing mechanism. Another type of transfer system involves a transfer mechanism including a complex follower arm, which follows the decreasing diameter of the first roll. Upon depletion of the first roll, the mechanism moves the free end of sheet material from the second roll into engagement with a dispensing mechanism. Both of these types of transfer systems, however, have complex transfer mechanisms and require a relatively long time to load the sheet material rolls.
As a result, maintenance personnel sometimes bypass the transfer system by only maintaining a single roll of sheet material in the dispenser. This has the effect of increasing the number of maintenance checks. This also sometimes leads to a new roll of sheet material being loaded in place of a used roll of sheet material, which is discarded while still having at least some usable sheet material thereon. Such practice can result in significant unnecessary waste of usable sheet material.
It is accordingly a primary object of the invention to provide a simple transfer system that requires minimum time to set up by maintenance personnel.
It is another object of the invention to provide a simple method of transferring between a first roll and a second roll of sheet material.